i realize that this is a hardware question but i thought to myself and came to the conlcusion that it does not match the description for the summary for the hardware section since it's not directly related to hardware "compatibility" with gentoo.

whew... there, i think im justified

my amd xp 1800+ runs at 50 celcius. i've been informed that that's too hot. i took the case off and am blowing a fan on it and i've downclocked it to 1ghz. that seems to have brought it down to 37 degrees celcius. still sounds too hot to me. i know very little about hardware, so can someone tell me what's acceptable? am i overreacting? will an amd crap out long before its time if i run it at 37 degrees? what do i do?!

Um, seeing as I'm a dumb American and need to convert to Fahrenheit, 37C comes to 98.6 degrees... exactly normal body temperature. For a fast AMD, that is a temperature almost unheard of without water/peltier cooling. My advice? Bring your cpu back to full power at let it be. 50C isn't all that bad. If you're really concerned, go out and get a good heatsink/fan combo. Also, look into getting more case fans (both intake and output)._________________Get Firefox!

According to AMD's data sheet the max die temperature is 90C (or 85C for the 2200). I'd make an engineering guess that the temperature reported by the bios will be within 10C of the die temperature (die -> the silicon bit). So I'd say that 50C is nothing to worry about.

I have an Athlon XP1600+ with an Arkua 7528 heatsink and Arctic silver III, three case fans, dual fan power supply and round cables. Despite all of this, my CPU temperature measures 53.5 celcius when running seti@home and 51 when nothing is running. I have doubts about the accuracy of the temperature monitors on my motherboard (Abit kx7-333) and generally doubt the accuracy of any integrated temperature monitors on any motherboard. If you have a decent heatsink/fan, decent case cooling, and use some sort of thermal paste which is applied correctly, you shouldn't worry.

If you are experiancing random crashes, its time to peltier it or underclock it. If your CPU is running at 75oC and nothing is going wrong at all, who cares. High temperatures do lower the lifespan, but you'll be sure to replace it before it dies.

37 C is _definately_ not hot. That's body temperature. If you were to touch something that temp, it would feel sorta lukewarm. My 10/100 mini-switch runs a lot hotter than that. Back in "the day" it was possible to burn yourself on a properly operating 486 (you could accidentally touch them as they didn't always have a heatsink/fan). Like others said, unless it's unstable, I wouldn't worry, but even if it was, I would look at something like bad RAM first. Unless that 50 degree number is way off, even that isn't the kind of temp that should cause problems._________________"An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head."
-- Eric Hoffer

OK, since I've got a new Atlon since yesterday, I have to append my temp.

It is a Athlon TBird 1400@1300 with Arctic Silver and an Alpha Heatsink. Even after calculating a few hours with dnetc it never reached the 60°C, it keeps around 55°C. And believe me, that's nothing compared to my graphiccard...

Short (as already all the other said...): Nothing to worry. I set 75°C as the emergency shutdown temperature in my BIOS and I'm quite sure, this will be enough to protect the die (I think, the processor is aprox. 10-15° hotter than the motherboard measures; some boards are "calculating" the temperature , but only into the "hotter" direction)